♪ assuming i'd have time ♪ assuming i'd grow old ♪ what's going to happen? ♪ and will i be alive tomorrow? ♪ ♪ what's going to happen ♪ to me? ♪ you're going to be ok ♪ all: ♪ that's what's going to happen ♪ ♪ everything's ok ♪ we're right here beside you ♪ ♪ we won't let you slip away ♪ ♪ plan for tomorrow ♪ 'cause we swear to you ♪ you're going to be ok ♪ i'm going to be ok all: ♪ that's what's going to happen ♪ ♪ everything's ok ♪ everything's ok ♪ we will never leave you

♪ right here we will stay ♪ plan for tomorrow ♪ plan for tomorrow ♪ 'cause we swear to you ♪ you're going to be ok ♪ we hope shh. did it work? you're gonna have to tell us. [beep] [indistinct chatter] ah. thank you. by the way, who was the best singer? you know, like, in your head. don't let the fact that i went to theater camp affect your decision. j.d.: in musicals, there's always a happy ending. but in life, sometimes when you get what you want, you end up missing what you left behind. whether it's your roommate... see you in a little while. ok. j.d.: or time spent with your child.

or even the music you used to hear in your head. [humming] [sighs] >> july 26, 2011! from comedy central's world news headquarters in new york, this is "the daily show" with jon stewart. (cheers and applause) captioning sponsored by comedy central >> jon: welcome to "the daily show"! my name is jon stewart. good show tonight! we got a nice one for you tonight. our guest tonight, npr's juan williams will be joining us. (cheers and applause)

really? he's not there anymore? (laughter) well, i'll definitely ask him about that. (laughter) but we begin, of course, with our ongoing national crisis. (laughter and applause) one week, ladies and gentlemen, for our two parties to agree to raise the country's arbitrary debt limit for the 102nd time for the drop-dead august 2 catastrophic ultimatum we've already moved twice. (laughter) and so it was under these conditions that president barack obama interrupted a bachelorette's search for love... (laughter). ... to take that long walk down "we killed bin laden" lane. >> tonight i want to talk about the debate we've been having in

washington over the national debt. >> jon: the debate we've been having? (laughter) is that what that noise out of washington's been? it sounded like an a elephant seal trying to (bleep) a truck! (laughter) actually, that footage is from a few years ago. the two of them are very happy together, though. (applause) that's an abomination. fun to ride. the president was in full educator-in-chief mode. >> for the last decade, we've spent more money than we've taken in. if we stay on the current path, our growing debt could cost us jobs and do serious damage to the economy. >> jon: huh? (laughter) you know, i think your financial austerity path message may be slightly undercut by the golden-chaired red carpet path you walked down to tell us about

it. isn't there any way to do the tighten the belt speech from a room that doesn't look like the foyer of the vatican? (laughter) just saying if willy wonka had to address america's chocolate shortage, he might not do it from the waterfall room. (laughter) augustus gloop! but enough on the theatrics, let's get down to the nitty-gritty. >> basically, the debate has centered around two different approaches. the first approach says "let's live within our means by making serious, historic cuts in government spending. let's cut domestic spending to the lowest level it's been since dwight eisenhower was presiden president." >> jon: all right. so massive cuts to government spending. no surprise coming from the republicans. what's that? oh, that's the democrats' plan. (laughter) what the (bleep)'s been going on down there? (laughter) so what exactly do the republicans want?

>> republicans in congress are insisting on a different approach, a "cuts-only" approach. an approach that doesn't ask the wealthiest americans or biggest corporations to contribute anything at all. how can we ask a student to pay more for college before we ask hedge fund managers to stop paying taxes at a lower rate than their secretaries. >> jon: death to the oligarchs! death to the oligarchs! (cheers and applause) power to the people! power to the... power to the people! (cheers and applause) wow! wow! communism is heavy! (laughter) i had no idea how much strength it took to be a communist. (laughter) at long last, mr. president, we begin to address the grotesque income and wealth disparity that has been allowed to m metastasie to fealty to corporate overlords. give us our assignments, comrade. what is our mission? >> so i'm asking you all to make

your voice heard. if you want a balanced approach to reducing the deficit, let your member of congress know. if you believe we can solve this problem through compromise, send that message. (laughter) (laughter) >> jon: that's your idea? call your congressman? did the president just quit? (laughter) i mean, seriously, you're the president! you're asking us to call congress? oh, yeah, sure, i'll call the congress. why don't you come here and mow my (bleep)ing lawn because i've got (bleep) to do! (cheers and applause) you know, it's like you've given up! it feels like that moment when you were a kid and your family's late for an event and your dad won't come out of the bathroom and you mom looks at you and

says "will you talk to him? he'll listen to you." he won't listen to me, i'm seven. and he's an ideologue. i actually feel bad for the president now! he interrupted "the bachelorette" to be like (whispering) ca"can you call your congressma? i can't talk to them!" it's like going to that restaurant where they're like "you get to make your own pizza" and you're like, you make your own (bleep)ing pizza. (laughter) he's in a tight spot with the economy which became very apparent by the end of his speech. >> so let's seize this moment to show why the united states of america is still the greatest nation on earth. not just because we can still keep our word and meet our obligations but because we can still come together as one nation. (laughter and applause) thank you. god bless you. god states of america. >> jon: oh, not the golden

chairs! oh, don't worry, mr. president, you'll get them back when things turn around. of course, the president was only half of the evening's entertainment. the opening act, if you will, for the republican response which came from the world's saddest tangerine. (laughter) when john boehner spoke it became clear that while we may be scraping the debt ceiling, we are nowhere near close to running out of cliches. >> in washington more spending and more debt is business as usual. well, i've got news for washington: those days are over. the president has often said we need a balanced approach which in washington means we spend more and you pay more. i've always believed the bigger the government the smaller the people. >> jon: wait, bigger the government, the smaller the people. that means the smaller the government the bigger the people. (laughter) which means if we get rid of government we'll have giant people! (cheers and applause) the republican plan is to destroy government and create a superrace of right-wing titans. or rightans.

(laughter) actually, there was one line in john boehner's speech that jumped out at me. >> here is a president asking for the largest debt increase in american history on the heels of the largest spending binge in american history. >> jon: which came on the heels of an almost absurdly reckless decade with unfunded wars in iraq and afghanistan and unfunded trillion-dollar medical prescription bill and tax cuts for the well they are the largest single policy contributor to our deficit. in fact, i myself voted for all of these... back to my original point. (cheers and applause) obama! now, look, i'm not an economist, but i do have one area of expertise that i believe i can refute speaker boehner on. >> here's what we got for that massive spending binge. a new health care bill that most americans never asked for. a stimulus bill that's more effective in producing material for late-night comedians than it was in producing jobs.

(audience reacts). >> jon: no, that is so true! that is so true! 125 that stimulus bill gave us so much material. here's another stimulus humdinger i came up with this morning while i was listening to bloomberg radio. "hey, how about this manufacturing sector with underutilized capacity, huh? am i right? i don't know if we're stimulating demand through increased credit availability or just cutting losses due to inventory drawdowns" boom! boom! (laughter) are you kidding me, boehner? you think comedians enjoy fiscal incompetence and bureaucratic paralysis? let me show you something. see this right here? (laughter) the guy in the tiger costume is congressman david wu of oregon. apparently he resigned today because of inappropriate sexual contact towards an 18-year-old. did i mention that's a real picture of him dressed like tigger? (laughter) so let me explain something to you. you really think i'm going to stimulus stuff. (bleep)ing with this guy would be... how do i put this?

grrreat! (cheers and applause) we'll be right back.

...was it something big?

...or something small? ...something old? ...or something new? ...or maybe, just maybe... it's something you haven't seen yet. the 2nd generation of intel core processors. stunning visuals, intelligent performance. this is visibly smart. (cheers and applause) welcome back. every so often a news anchor end up becoming the story. dan rather being roughed up on the floor of the '68 democrat quick convention. marv albert having a sex scandal. barbara walters causing the destruction of the hindenburg.

(laughter) why? why barbara? why do you kill? lately watching cnn i've noticed something newsworthy may be brewing there as well. >> one group calculated how much it would cost to go to hog warts school of witchcraft and wizardry. >> more than $43,000 and that's for only one year. tuition is actually the biggest chunk. just to send your kid off to become a wizard, it's going to price it right out of the ballpark i say. >> i'd say it costs zero because it doesn't exist. >> there you go. (laughter) >> victim done the calculations for you. right at the top. it is interesting, though. >> jon: did you see that? his half-hearted last minute effort to feign that he cares at all about what that woman was talking about. that's not just casual anchor banter, my friends. that's a call for help. as we explore in our new segment, cnn anchor don lennon appears not to care for cnn. cnn unconcerned. it appears your anchor don lemon

may not care very much for the antics of your network cnn. behold. even parts of canada are sinfully hot. a little warmer up here than where i'm used to, but, hell. this is nothing to joke about this. it is dangerous and, as i said, nothing to joke. >> he is the kato to my green hornet. the robin to my bat man. the dino girl to my electrowoman. i have no idea who any of these people are except for batman. >> jon: that may be the nicest way i've ever heard anyone say "who write this is (bleep)?" (laughter) but the hostage situation that appears to be don lemon's tenure at cnn reached its... do you say zenith or nader? i'm going to say both. >> one, two, three! >> oh! >> i've got to tell you, i like don lemon a lot but he's going to have to work hard to top that. cnn newsroom begins with don lemon. good morning, don. >> good morning. i don't think he's going to have

to work that hard. what the heck was that? (cheers and applause). >> jon: what do you mean what the heck was that? that was ali velshi's doppelganger being knocked into a glass of water from a toilet paper tube. what is it your first day in news, lemon? turns out reporter don lemon prefers reporting such stories as the uprising in syria, breach of trust in british journalism or even some simple local interest stories. >> emily good says she recorded that video in her front yard because she was concerned about racial profiling and police harassment. do you believe that this is a systematic problem with rochester police? >> jon: that's lemon's comfort zone. don't worry, i'm sure cnn producers are hard at work trying to fit don lemon into their format with something catchy like "don lemon's zesty news bowl." (laughter) i got one, how about "t lemon

harangue?" (laughter) you drive a hard bargain, sir! we'll be right

(cheers and applause). >> jon: welcome back. my guest tonight is a political analyst for the fox news network. his new book is called "muzzled. the assault on honest debate." please welcome to the program juan williams. sir? (cheers and applause) nice to see you, thanks for

joining us. (applause) so thank you for joining us. >> my pleasure. great to be here. >> jon: thank you for being here. "muzzled: the assault on honest debate." so tell us. i guess the impetus of this book for the most part the incident that you had with comments that you had made during a segment on o'reilly's show, npr fires you. walk us through that very briefly. >> well, as you know, o'reilly was on the view and said that muslims attacked us on 9/11. after he says that whoop i goldberg and joy behar walks off the set and then o'reilly says "i meant radical extremist muslims." they come back. so the next o'reilly show, he has me on and he says kel me where i went wrong. so i said let's talk about this. the fact a that there were muslims who attacked us, who sited jihad and i can't get away from the fact that we just had the times square bomber talking about the startup of war on

america and i tell you what in all honesty, when i'm in an airport and i see people dressed in muslim garb first and foremost identifying themselves as muslim i have anxiety and it makes me nervous. then i went on to say but timothy mcveigh is a christian and those people from the westboro baptist church who make those offensive rants at funerals they're christian and we don't stereotype christians on that basis and we have to be careful in terms of what we say that we don't encourage people to do crazy stuff like burn the koran or cut some cab driver's throat here in new york. so i said all that. but then, of course, the top part was taken away by people who, you know, the council on arab-american relations or whatever and then npr also acting on that. >> jon: you had been, withing at npr. >> ten years. >> jon: so you must have had so many thought bags. (laughter) tote. when you travel, carrying things must never be an issue. >> not a problem. not a problem.

>> jon: so npr... now... backing this up. those are for our present environment in terms of discourse i think pretty mild. in almost any way you frame it, certainly the network that you said help the on and certainly what you see over the airwaves, npr decides you can no longer work there. that seems unfair. >> to me. (laughter) you know, look, i'd been there ten years. i'd worked at fox before i came to npr. and, you know, jon... >> jon: you thought you had proved to them at some level that you were not a bigot. >> i didn't think i needed to prove it. i've written... i wrote "eyes on the prize." i've win the well-received biography of justice marshall, the first african american on the court. i didn't think i needed to prove to anybody who i am. but i was stunned that they would... i said did you guys look at the entirety of the transcript? do you understand what's going on here? that i'm, in fact, challenging

bill o'reilly. that i'm trying to say we need to affirm the idea that america's a place of religious tolerance even as america deals with what is the real anxiety over the link between arab extremism and terrorism. we have to acknowledge it. and to just say oh, it doesn't exist, can't say that, only allows those feelings to fester and then you have eruptions and people do wild and crazy things, awful things. did you hear this? no, nothing you can say, we don't want you to come in, we don't want to talk to you, your contract is over, you are gone. >> jon: so in many ways you think they just... because you work at fox news they wanted, maybe, to get rid of you. >> i think a lot of it was an antipathy towards fox. why are you working there? all along... >> jon: now why do they have an antipathy towards that organization? they seem like very... (laughter). i'm not that familiar, obviously, with what goes on over there. >> i don't think so. (laughter). >> jon: but they seem pleasant enough. i guess i was shocked by the whole thing. now, let's talk about the conclusions that you've drawn out from it.

>> sure. >> jon: what is your sense now of what that says about the way that we deal with each other either in the news or each other on earth? >> that's there's a total lack of honest debate. we've got a niche media landscape. if you're a liberal you say, hey, you know what? fox news is biased. if you're a liberal you say "i don't like what goes on on conservative talk radio. i don't like that "wall street journal" editorial page." if you're a conservative you say "jon stewart is biased." you say "the "new york times" is biased." you say "hollywood is biased." and as a result people rarely... people go to media sources that affirm preexisting opinions rather than saying hey, wait, let me listen to what this guy has to say. and it may be that whatever the side has to say is ridiculous, okay, dismiss it. but at least listen, give them some sense of respect because to me if you don't have honest debate, if you don't have honest exchange of ideas you're going nowhere in this country. you don't solve big questions, big problems.

(cheers and applause). >> jon: but what is the causality, do you think? because, you know, part of the strategy, it seems, of partisan media organizations is to delegitimize your opponent by suggesting bias rather than dealing with the criticisms because something constructive can come out of anyone. when i watch fox news, it... there's often times they'll bring up a point that is extremely valid. >> sure. >> jon: i'm thinking of one, hold on. (laughter) but... (laughter) >> you stopped! >> jon: but isn't that... isn't it easy to say that it's a very easy thing to do to dismiss it, not all organizations that claim to be partisan are as such and they're not all created equal and what is the thing that is stymieing the debate? or allowing it to be honest? what is it that's preventing, in

your mind, the honest aspect of it? >> because i think people don't listen. i think that it's right now as i said people get locked into one perspective or another and, you know, it's part of what's going on. and gulf stream to web sites with other like-minded people. they even get into subgroups of that web site and if you're not exactly on target, you're a bad guy. if you don't agree with me, you're a traitor. the last book i wrote "enough" was about bill cosby and cosby saying "we've got problems in the black community, out-of-wedlock births, high dropout rates, acceptance of the drug culture. we have to stop this." and cosby, all of a sudden he was labeled a bad guy, he's airing dirty laundry. look at what's going on in washington. a republican who says "maybe we should have some tax hikes. " now he's a rhino, a republican in name only. to be a real republican you have to stay with the club, believe what the crab tells you and don't deviate. so you can't have a debate with

somebody else. you can't have a conversation. >> jon: are we confusing, though, criticism with persecution? are we overreacting to the criticism as well? you know... do you have five minutes to stick around? >> for you... >> jon: seven. >> that's a deal. >> jon: "muzzled" is up on the bookshelves right now. we'll have more on the